One of the hardest things about graduate school for me is that the end is so difficult to pin down. When I started, I didn't know how long it would take me to graduate, although I hoped it would be six years or less. Since the end of my sixth year has come and gone, so has that hope. My classmates and I have heard tell of the 'rule of seven' — your committee will let you graduate if the number of years you've been in graduate school plus the number of your first-author papers is equal to or greater than seven. There are students around who have passed their seventh year and wish that this rule was more than just a rumour.

People often tell me that I must be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. If I do see it, it seems to be flickering on and off. I know exactly what I need to do to finish, I've established estimated timetables and yet I'm still not done. Something that I thought should easily take less than three months is still hanging around after four years like the world's biggest loose end. The need for new experiments and controls continues to crop up out of nowhere.

There is a corridor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (where I did my undergraduate education) that is called the infinite corridor because it gives the illusion of being a very, very long hallway with a door at the end. Graduate school seems like that to me. There is an end, you just can't tell how far away it is. And still, I inch forward, trying to grasp a goal that continues to remain just out of reach.